


Bedroom farce

by Florchis



Series: Cluster marriage [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 25 percent staticquake, 4 percent fitzdaisy, Attempt at Humor, Comedy of Errors, Everyone is bipoly and nothing hurts, Meet-Cute, Multi, Open Marriage, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, This is 70 percent skimmons, and 1 percent fitzlincoln
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28991277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: When the new guy she is dating asks for their spouses to meet, Daisy can imagine things going bad, but not like this. They also go right.
Relationships: Lincoln Campbell/Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Series: Cluster marriage [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153472
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	Bedroom farce

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Quakerider Writers Guild Valentine Challenge. My prompt was "Lady’s Slipper, a flower symbolizing Capricious beauty".
> 
> Rated T because of language, mostly. There is one passing mention of panic attacks, in case that is triggering to you. 
> 
> The working title of this was "Cluster marriage" (bringing back an old habit of naming fics after polyam terms) so you can imagine how it goes. If this were to turn into a series, that would definitely be its title. I have been wanting to bring open relationships into the spectrum of polyamory instead of always writing closed triads/quads, so this happened.

It starts like a fairy tale.

“Shit!” 

She can see everything happening in slow motion: the way the sensible heel of her shoe slips on the curb of the sidewalk, and on its way down, it breaks against the pavement, bringing her toppling down on the street.

The embarrassment comes first, then the burn on her hands from the scrape, then the pain on her coccyx from the fall. Only when she looks at her foot and sees that a nasty bruise is starting to swell in her ankle does the pain from it register in. How lovely.

“Excuse me, miss, are you okay?”

There are a small group of people gathering around her asking about her wellbeing, but only one is loud and clear enough for Daisy to move her head looking from the source of it. It takes her a second, but she ends up finding a man more or less her age, kneeling by her side and looking at her with genuine worry etched all over his face. 

Daisy’s first thought is that it’s a shame he is messing up such a nice pair of pants by kneeling on the filthy street.

Her second one is how impossibly blue his eyes are, even behind the glasses.

He places a hand on her shoulder, and Daisy follows the movement with her eyes. Only later she will understand he did it to ground her and help her recover from the surprise.

“Do you mind if I take a look? I am a doctor.”

Now that the shock has waned, Daisy feels even more embarrassed. At least people had started to scatter now that there is someone taking care of her. 

“Um, sure. I am okay, though.”

The man acknowledges her statement with a nod, but still moves closer to her foot and takes off the offending shoe. Good thing she wasn’t wearing a miniskirt or something like that. Small blessings.

“I am Lincoln, what is your name?” he asks conversationally while his cool hands and his eyes expertly check every part of her leg from the knee down. Having shit handwriting and sweet-talking people to cover up their evaluations, they must be two first-year classes at medical school. 

Hum. She should ask Jemma about that.

“Daisy.”

“Ah. I see.” He is looking at the daisy brooch she carries pinned on her purse, which is a gift from her goddaughter, and Daisy feels herself blushing. Damn, how long has it been since he has _blushed_ upon meeting someone? Not since Jemma, for sure. The tenderness passes through his face like a wave, and a second later he is all business again. “I don’t think anything is broken. It’s probably just a sprain, but I would feel more comfortable getting it checked out. I have a friend who works in a hospital nearby, would you let me take you there?”

She does not traditionally allow men to take her to no secondary locations (she might not have had loving parents but she has seen her John Mulaney), but it seems unlikely this Lincoln dude put some oil on the sidewalk only to have her fall and then abduct her via hospital. Either way, she knows how to break his arms, even limping, in seven different ways. 

“Sure.”

He gives her the purse, helps her stand, and calls a taxi for them. 

They forget to pick up the shoe, and for years to come, they will joke about their Cinderella-esque meet-cute. 

The rest of it is history.

* * *

A story that quickly turns into a bedroom farce. 

“Manscaping!”

Daisy looks at Jemma flabbergasted. When Lincoln asked to meet her wife and for her to meet his husband, Daisy was wary but understanding. He told her that he once dated a man that swore that his partner was cool with him dating other people, but who ended up being a Cheater Mc Cheater That Cheats, and that time was one time too many for him. _I am not saying you are lying to me, Daisy, but I hope you will forgive me for being over-cautious,_ he had said. Daisy understood. After all, he was asking just for a friendly dinner the four of them together, and Jemma said she was okay with it, and Daisy likes him enough to want this to work. (A lot. That ‘enough’ actually means ‘a lot’.) It is not a big deal. 

She and Jemma still have decided beforehand on a safeword for extraction because they were realistic enough to know they might need one, but she never thought they were going to use it before even getting to the table!

She takes Jemma’s elbow and walks her to the ladies’ room, firing a swift text to Lincoln asking him to order the appetizers without them. Once they enter the restaurant’s bathroom Jemma bolts to the sink and sprays cold water on her face, which says something about how she is feeling considering how much time she spent on her make-up before coming.

Daisy presses a hand on her wife’s back and looks at their reflection in the mirror. 

“Babe, are you okay? Do you want to leave?” Jemma being comfortable with other people she is dating is one of the big reasons why they are doing this, and Jemma’s wellbeing will forever be at the top of her priorities. If she needs to abort this for whatever reason, Daisy can get them sprawled on their couch, watching Netflix and eating ice-cream in their pajamas in less than an hour.

“Just give me a minute.” She closes her eyes and Daisy counts on the mirror the ups and downs of her chest until they make ten deep breaths. Only after that Jemma opens her eyes again. “Do you have a picture of Lincoln?”

Her eyebrows fly to her hairline at the request, but Daisy still fumbles with her phone to look for a pic. They have only been on three dates so far, not counting the first afternoon they spent together at the hospital, so they don’t have many pics together (which is also the reason she still hasn’t shown Jemma any), but she manages to find a slightly blurry selfie they took with a cute cat who was sleeping on a small patch of sunshine on a windowsill.

Jemma’s breathing hitches when Daisy shows her the pic, and Daisy’s heart falls to her feet. Of course, this all was too good to be true.

What Jemma says next punches all the air out of her. 

“I hooked up with him.”

“What?”

Jemma is wringing her hands together, and out of habit Daisy takes them in hers and that makes Jemma’s shoulders drop a bit.

“I am so sorry!”

It might be the panic in her wife’s features or it might be the ridicule of the whole situation, but Daisy’s uneasiness settles inside her stomach. This isn’t a big deal. Why should they make it one?

She takes Jemma’s hands to her lips and places a gentle kiss on top of her knuckles.

“I am only going to say this: Jemma, there are not that many Lincolns around, how didn’t you realize it sooner?”

Jemma releases her hands from Daisy’s grasp, too pent-up with anxious energy to keep them still. 

“Med school was a crazy time!” 

“You didn’t even go to the same college!” 

“Well, you know, med school is an endurance test that brings together med students from all-” 

“Stop bullshitting me, Jem. You had forgotten about him until you saw him tonight, hadn’t you?”

Jemma has the decency to at least blush.

“Maybe.” She licks her lips, and Daisy waits patiently for whatever she wants to say that she is having a hard time saying. “How are you not mad about this?”

“It would be a little hypocritical of me to be mad about you sleeping with him many years ago when I had sex with him last week, wouldn’t it?” She leans closer to peck Jemma on the lips, both their lipsticks be damned. “First of all, I wouldn’t be mad about something that happened before we were dating, unless you have, dunno, killed someone. Have you killed someone, Jemma?”

She bops Jemma’s nose, trying to get her to lighten up, and Jemma lets out a tiny smile.

“Not yet.” 

“Good girl. In the second place, when we decided we were going to do this, we knew there were going to be hard moments and weird moments and everything in between, remember?”

“Yes.”

“I am not saying I am not a little shocked, but I am not mad.” She kisses Jemma again, allowing herself to let go a little more into the kiss. “If we want to call it quits, we can do that, but if you are okay with moving forward, don’t stop on my behalf, at least not yet.”

“Okay.” Jemma inhales deeply and leaves the embrace to turn and look at herself in the mirror. She got her problem-solver look on while she straightens up her clothes and searches through her purse for her lipstick tube, and Daisy has never loved her more. “We came this far, we ought to try it.”

“Okay.”

She offers the lipstick, and Daisy moves a step closer, puckers her lips, and closes her eyes while Jemma paints her.

“Besides, if I forgot about him, he can’t be that great, right?”

It could be a jealous, dismissive jab, but Daisy can hear the smile on her voice, and she can’t help mirroring it, even if that makes Jemma let out a small yelp because Daisy moving ruined her handiwork.

“Dr. Dr. Jemma Anne Simmons-Johnson, no sex talk until I have had that chat with him, remember?”

Jemma plants a kiss on her cheek and they seriously need to stop messing each other’s makeup if they want to get out of here anytime soon.

“Damn, I had to try.”

* * *

“I need to have a smoke!”

Daisy stands up from the table as quickly as she can, cutting up in half whatever Lincoln was saying, and yanks on Jemma’s hand to get her to follow. She turns around and starts to walk, not paying any attention to either Jemma’s and Lincoln’s protests of ‘But you don’t smoke!’. She needs to go away. And fast.

“Daisy, what the hell? Please don’t tell me you have picked up smoking.”

Things were going great. She and Jemma had gone to the table where only Lincoln was sitting, Jemma feigned surprise and Lincoln acted like a complete gentleman, very much unlike Jemma’s first reaction. Obstacle one had been overcome. Jemma apologized profusely for being late, but Lincoln replied that his husband had gotten delayed in traffic, so there was no harm done. He very politely asked Jemma what she had done after med school, and when Jemma excitedly launched the conversation about her work (one of her favorite topics to talk about), Daisy just relaxed against her chair and let them do the talking, content that things were going well for now. 

And then obstacle two walked straight into her visual field: Leopold Fitz, her high school sweetheart, aged like a fine wine, was making a beeline for their table, his gorgeous eyes big as saucers and fixed on her.

Daisy choked, and when both Lincoln and Jemma turned to follow her line of sight, Lincoln said, “Oh, there you are, handsome.”

Cue to the smoking excuse and to her hyperventilating on the middle of the restaurant’s patio, a confused and worried Jemma holding onto her hand.

Well, at least now she understands how Jemma felt when they walked inside and she saw Lincoln. Daisy breathes deeply and turns around to look at her wife.

“We already used our ladies’ room card this evening, I had to come up with something new.”

Jemma pulls on her hand until she gets Daisy to sit with her on the stones that surround one of the flowerbeds full of deep-green plants of the patio. It’s a good call: sitting down, Daisy doesn’t feel nearly as likely to fall down from lightheadedness. If she faints, she is going to blame the jasmine smell that is intoxicating out here. 

“Daisy-”

“Remember my high-school sweetheart?” she blurts out, and Jemma raises her eyebrows in surprise.

“Fitz, was it? What does he have to do-?” Daisy points with her thumb over her shoulder to the inside of the restaurant, and Jemma’s realization paints over her face like a poem. “Oh! No way!”

“Yes way.” She hides her face in her hands. It was too good to be true: she really likes Lincoln, and for once her interest was well-received by someone who understood that she has a wife she is fully committed to. It was still too early to tell, but even with Jemma’s small hiccup from a moment ago, Daisy had dared start to hope that this could actually work between them. Of course, something had to go south, because having Jemma is way more happiness and love than she is ever allowed to have.

“Can I ask back your own question? Fitz is not an easy name to forget or miss. How did you not realize it was him sooner?”

“Well, Lincoln never mentioned his name. It was always ‘my husband that, my husband this’; it is actually kinda sweet when he does it.”

Jemma taps her chin with her index finger.

“Makes sense, keeps it a bit private until things get more serious. Sounds like Lincoln.”

Despite everything, Daisy can’t fight a small smile from her lips when she playfully bumps Jemma’s shoulder with hers.

“Oh, so now you are a world-expert on him?”

“Baby, I am a world expert in _everything_.”

The reality of things has not changed, but Jemma taking it easily and even in good humor allows Daisy to breathe easier like there is no longer a hand on her trachea trying to squeeze all the joy out of her. Wow, she just barely eluded a panic attack. That’s both an awful thought and a good one. 

Jemma, as always, seems to sense the inner turmoil in her and lays her head on Daisy’s shoulder, an expression of comfort that is not too smothering.

“What do you want to do?”

“Well, I have to call it quits, no? This has become way too messy.”

“Maybe.” Jemma’s voice is airtight, showing no emotions like she is holding her cards close to her chest, and Daisy looks at her with surprise. “But maybe not. Don’t you always say that your story with Fitz was cut short when he moved, and to this day you still miss him?” Daisy nods, slowly, beginning to see where Jemma’s argument is going, and Jemma laces their fingers together. “This might be a good opportunity to connect back with him. Either way, you _can_ decide now, but you don’t have to. You can move slowly and do check-ups often, and decide as things progress.”

As it usually happens, Jemma is right. The idea of going back and getting to talk again with Fitz after well over a decade of separation feels intriguing, and, again, _she really likes Lincoln._ It is not an ideal situation, of course, but what can you do? You gotta play with the cards that you have been dealt. 

She nuzzles her nose against Jemma’s shoulder, and she can see in her wife’s smile that Jemma knows she won this argument. 

“I can’t believe my wife is trying to talk me into going back inside to talk to not one, but two guys I have slept with.”

Jemma gives her a kiss on the top of her head.

“That’s because I am a good wife.” She stands up, brushes the back of her pants for any possible dirt, and offers her hand to Daisy. “Come on. Let’s face the music together.”

Daisy, as always, takes her hand and follows her inside. 

* * *

Like a proper fairy tale, this one has a happy ending. 

They get to the table holding hands, and Daisy feels weak on her knees when both Lincoln and Fitz fix their eyes on her. It is not timidity, but both ‘boy, what am I getting myself into’ and ‘ can not wait to see where this goes’.

“Hi, Daisy.”

“Fitz, long time no see.”

They shake hands like they are business partners and still her hand tingles when they break apart. Lincoln clears his throat to call off their intense stare match (and man, he is giving her _a lot_ to stare at, time has really been kind to him), but when Daisy jostles herself out of the daydream, there is no annoyance in Lincoln’s face, but a small, lopsided smile.

“I ordered some food to go,” Lincoln begins, and Fitz places an encouraging hand on top of his shoulder. Damn, they do make a nice couple. “Two separate bags.” _Oh._ Jemma grips her hand under the table while Daisy does her best to try to hide her disappointment. “We thought it would be better to discuss things over in a more intimate setting, if you want. If not, you can take one of them home and I can only hope you want to call me again, Daisy.”

She looks at Jemma from the corner of her eyes, and her wife gives her a small nod on top of the ‘anatomically inaccurate’ heart she is drawing with her thumb on the back of Daisy’s hand. Lincoln looks nervous but hopeful, and Fitz looks like he has been in a trainwreck, but she still can recognize tenderness in his eyes when she sees it. 

There are a lot of things that could go wrong here, but there are also a lot of things that could go right.

“Your place or ours?”

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Prompts
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>   * Reader-reader interaction
> This author replies to comments (but it might take a while). If you'd rather not get a reply, please add *whispers* to your comment.



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